Have a look at the image above and ask yourself "Why?" (Who would build such a thing... who would buy it?)

US automotive site Kicking Tires has reported that the International Truck Group has buckled under the triple-whammy of the petrol price shock, a knackered banking system, and a severely knackered US economy, and killed off its XT 'Consumer Truck' line.

("About time somebody lined up all those dandy smart-ass Wall Street bankers for the mother of all hoss-whippin's boy")

You might be wondering who in fact would want something as daft as International's CXT. MXT and RXT 'Consumer Trucks', but, before things turned pear-shaped, our seppo cousins were happy to fork out USD$90-large for these tonka-toy-styled 'mini-me' prime-movers. Mini...?

No, they're freakin' huge. (There is another range of adjectives like "dumb-arse", "abominable" and "crap-tastic" that also aren't too wide of the mark.)

As Kicking Tires reports, International was on a roll building and selling these gargantuan atrocities to "the common man": those whose automotive ambition was to "park a nearly semi-sized International in their McMansion driveway". That was then, this is now.

With the wheels of the US economy having fallen completely off the cart and rolled away into a dark and very deep hole, sales of these dinosaurs have all but dried up. So, discretion being the better part of valour, International has killed them dead as a buzzard.

(You have to wonder who was buying these things... the Griswald's? Triple-H, John Cena, the Sgt. Slaughter fan club and other noted good ol' boys and intellectuals?)

I somehow can't see International ever offering anything like these dinosaurs in a hybrid.

Apparently, International is now focusing on its larger truck business like the Lonestar semi and military versions of the XT trucks. There's a relief.